Peruvian despair in Vargas Llosas Conversación en la catedral - Book Report/Review Example

Download file to see previous pages... The challenge of this task is explained by Vargas himself:
Resulta espantosamente difcil escribir sobre la realidad latinoamericana, justificarla literariamente, hacerla verosmil; es una realidad demaggica, irreal. Hay que buscar formulas sumamente complejas, barrocas, para trasladar a una narracin sin caer en el panfleto (Conte 1972, p. _____) - client - I didn't have this page #, please fill it in.
The difficulties of creating this literary 'verosimilitud', this intimate and convincing connection between object and representation, forced Vargas to make numerous structural and formal innovations in order to arrive at this accurate projection of the nation of Per. In doing so, he approached the concept of allegory in reverse, finding it necessary for him to distill the scattered and discordant energy of Peruvian history into a projected character, a projected mind, a projected form frenetically developed in order to become 'an anatomy of an ignorant society exactly evades such interlocked complexities' as are presented in the novel (The Cambridge Companion to Modern Latin American Culture 2004, p. 98). In order to represent analogically the contemporary state of Per through the voice of Conversacin's 'hero' Santiago Zavala, Vargas Llosa was compelled to seek its formal analogue as a sufficient and central projection of the Peruvian reality. Thus, the form of the narrative itself managed to become the true likeness of Per, the same hall of shattered mirrors as the senseless history of the nation it intends to depict. In developing this true likeness, the structure arrives at a relentless shattering of all sense of linearity or causal justice, formally kaleidoscopic in its funereal procession through the broken devastation of Odra-era Per. Essentially, in examining the formal structure of the novel, its analogue, the projected 'realidad latinoamericana,' is disclosed.
The question looms over the text: 'En qu momento se haba jodido el Per' (Vargas Llosa 1969, p. 13). Structurally the question comes at the beginning in a long series of questions, in the second sentence, after the brief shot of squalor and dilapidation filtered through the loveless lens of Santiago's mind. In exploring the effects of the ochenio in Per, the question unfolds through a series of confusions and obfuscations that ultimately amount to temporal trauma. If history is a logical sequence of events, then it can - at least a priori - be understood linearly, start to finish or else backwards. Yet this is not the case structurally in the novel. Nor it is the case in the fragmented minds of the main character, whose dissembled narrative spills out into a projection of his own helpless bewilderment. The voice of the narrative, which describes events consistently in the past tense, remains in the present specifically to record the thoughts of the hero':
Era que se haba roto algo que pareca eterno, piensa1, me doli tanto por ella, por m, por l Pero habas disimulado, como siempre, Zavalita, ms que siempre...[A]hora y por primera vez que estaban juntos y no estaban, que faltaba la comunicacin respiratoria de otras ...Download file to see next pagesRead More